Red Horn (Siouan deity)
Red Horn is a culture hero in Siouan oral traditions, specifically of the Ioway and Hocąk (Winnebago) nations. He has different names. Only in Hocąk literature is he known as "Red Horn" (Hešucka), but among the Ioway and Hocągara both, he is known by one of his variant names, "He Who Wears (Man) Faces on His Ears". This name derives from the living faces on his earlobes (Hocąk), or earbobs that come to life when he places them on his ears (Ioway). Elsewhere, he is given yet another name, "Red Man" (Wąkšucka), because his entire body is red from head to toe. Red Horn was one of the five sons of Earthmaker, whom the Creator fashioned with his own hands and sent to earth to rescue humanity. During his sojourn on earth, he contested both giants and water spirits, and led war parties against the bad spirits who plagued humanity. As Wears Faces on His Ears, he is also said to be a star, although its identity is a subject of controversy. Under the names "One Horn" (Hejąkiga) and "Without Horns" (Herok'aga), he and his sons are chiefs over the small hunting spirits known as the herok'a and the "little children spirits". Red Horn, as chief of the herok'a, has a spiritual and sometimes corporeal identity with the arrow. Archaeologists have speculated that Red Horn is a mythic figure in Mississippian art, represented on a number of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) artifacts. The son of Earthmaker According to legend, Red Horn is one of the five great soteriological spirits fashioned by the Creator’s own hands, sent to earth to make the world safe for the least endowed of Earthmaker’s creation, the “two-legged walkers”. The first spirit to be sent down to earth to help humanity was Trickster (Wakdjąkaga), whose foolishness made it necessary to recall him. Earthmaker next sent down Bladder (Wadexuga), whose arrogance led to the loss of all but one of his 20 brothers, so he too was recalled. Then Earthmaker made Turtle (Kecągega) and charged him to teach the humans how to live, but Turtle brought them war, and was in his turn recalled. The fifth and last of these heroes dispatched by Earthmaker was Hare (Wacdjįgega), who conquered all the bad spirits who had preyed on humanity. By accident, however, he introduced death, but made up for it by creating the Medicine Lodge, by whose discipline members could achieve immortality. Earthmaker made Hare in charge of this earth, and to each of the other three spirits he gave an otherworldly paradise to govern. The penultimate savior figure in this series was Redhorn. He had quite nearly succeeded, but was killed in a wrestling match with the enemies of the human race. Although later revived, he too was recalled, although the reasons for his failure are obscure. One source suggests that it was a lack of gravitas. Then Earthmaker (Mą'ųna) sent down another son, He who Wears Human Heads as Earrings. He went around talking to people, but they would always fix on his earrings which were actual, living, miniature human heads. When these little heads saw someone looking at them, they would wink and make funny faces. In the end, He who Wears Human Heads as Earrings could not accomplish the mission either. Unlike all the other soteriological spirits, Red Horn is not assigned a paradise over which to rule; and the Medicine Rite omits any mention of Red Horn from its account of the sons of Earthmaker. These facts indicate that Red Horn may have been a recent addition to the role. Meeker even suggested that a certain notable Piegan contemporary of the same name may have simply been elevated to divine status. More recently, Lankford held a similar view: "... Red Horn was a recent addition to the Winnebago pantheon diffused possibly from the Blackfoot tribe. Red Horn's adventures The adventures of Red Horn are set out in a set of stories known as the "Red Horn Cycle". The Red Horn Cycle depicts his adventures with Turtle, the thunderbird Storms-as-He-Walks (Mą’e-manįga) and others who contest a race of giants, the Wąge-rucge or "Man-Eaters", who have been killing human beings whom Red Horn has pledged to help. In the episode associated with this name, Red Horn turns himself into an arrow to win a race. After winning the race Red Horn creates heads on his earlobes and makes his hair into a long red braid called a he, "horn", in Hocąk. Thus he becomes known as "Red-horn" (he-šucka) and as "He who Wears (Human) Faces on His Ears" (įco-horúšika). In one episode an orphan girl who always wears a white beaverskin wrap is pressured by her grandmother to court Red Horn. Despite the girl's adamant refusal, the grandmother insists. She eventually relents and goes off to find Red Horn, who is surrounded by other girls. She teases him, and unexpectedly, he smiles at her. The other girls were jealous, they push and shove her and tell her "You don't know anything." Red Horn and his friends prepare to go on the warpath and are camped just outside the village. During this time the women bring the warriors moccasins and the she brings a pair to Red Horn, who accepts them. When the warriors return from battle, they play a prank and have the sentries proclaim that Red Horn and one of his friends are dead. The grandmother begins to cut the hair of the orphan girl, as if she were already Red Horn's wife. When he comes into view and it is apparent that he is not dead, the grandmother laments "I have wrecked my granddaughter's hair." The victors dance for four days, and many of the young men approach Red Horn to recommend their sisters to him. He takes no interest, and asks instead, "Where does the girl in the white beaverskin wrap live?" At night Red Horn shows up at the girl's lodge and lies down next to her. Her grandmother throws a blanket over them and they are married. In another episode, with their lives staked on the outcome, the giants challenge Red Horn and his friends to play kisik (lacrosse). The best giant player was a woman with long red hair just like Red Horn's. The little heads on Red Horn's ears caused her to laugh so much that it interfered with her game and the giants lost, but Red Horn married the girl with the red hair.10 The giants lost all the other contests as well. Then they challenged Red Horn and his friends to a wrestling match in which they threw all but Red Horn's friend Turtle. Since Red Horn and his fellow spirits lost two out of the three matches, they were all slain. Red Horn as a star There is a little-known myth of great importance that identifies Red Horn as a star. Ten brothers lived together in a longhouse. The eldest, Kunu, had four arms. The youngest brother was called "Wears Faces on His Ears" (įcohorúšika), because he had living human faces on each of his ears. By dancing all night and performing the hunting rite by which game is seduced, they were able to gain wives for themselves. However, the second brother, Hena, was jealous because his youngest brother had gotten the fattest woman (hinųk šį), so he persuaded his other brothers, all except Kunu and the next youngest, to join him in a plot to rid themselves of Wears Faces on His Ears. They brought him to the lodge of a beautiful woman who in reality was a water spirit (wakcexi). She persuaded him to go to the back of her lodge, where he fell through a trap door into the underworld. There he was made captive by the bad water spirits (wakcexi šišik). Loon and Otter were the nephews of the water spirits. Each made an impassioned plea to free the young man, but the bad water spirits were determined to eat him, so Loon and Otter left the underworld for the earth where they have lived ever after. Wears Faces on His Ears broke his chains as though they were made of string, then grabbed a fire brand and began to club the water spirits to death and to set their realm aflame. He tracked down the woman who had tricked him and chased her through the underworld, where she tried to hide as a tubercle on a weed. Just the same, he found her out and killed her. When he returned to earth, he discovered that in his absence the rebel brothers had abused his two loyal brothers. The disloyal brothers had in reality been foxes and coyotes. When Wears Faces on His Ears struck Hena with his club, he was transformed into a fox. Thus, the wicked brothers lived as animals thereafter. Wears Faces on His Ears and his two loyal brothers were stars. Without any reference to this story, much has been said about the stellar identity of Red Horn. In 1945, many years after his field work, Paul Radin suggested that Red Horn might be identical to the Morning Star (of Venus), known to the Hocągara as Wiragošge Xetera, “the Great Star”. Most archaeologists have accepted this suggestion. However, just three years later, he was less certain, saying only that Red Horn was “either evening- or morning-star”, and in 1954 he changed his position yet again, asserting that Red Horn, “probably is identical with the Evening Star”. After an extensive discussion of the problem, Lankford summed up by saying, “It appears that the safest conclusion for this study of Morning Star traditions is to accept the Winnebago divinities Horn, Blue Horn, the Twins as possibly stellar figures but to allow them to remain without a celestial name, insofar as ethnoastronomy is concerned.” Nevertheless, the very end of our story identifies Red Horn, in his form as Wears Faces on His Ears, as a fixed star, probably Alnilam of Orion. Morning Star, of course, is not a fixed star. Their lack of identity is confirmed in another story in which Man Faces on His Ears coexists with Morning Star. The connection between fixed stars and living beings on the ears finds a parallel in another Hocąk story in which Polaris (the North Star) has hummingbirds as earrings. Red Man, Chief of the Herok’a In the Red Horn Cycle, when a human chief offers his daughter as a prize in a race, all the fastest spirits in creation show up to compete. Nevertheless, a completely unknown person wins the race by turning himself into the fleetest of all things, an arrow, and shooting himself ahead of all the other competitors. The victor declares that he goes by the name “Red Horn”, but that the spirits know him as “Wears Man-Faces on His Ears”. The episode shows that Red Horn has a mystical identity with the arrow. There are two unpublished stories that reveal Red Horn’s sagittary nature. The first is “Chief of the Horok’a”, and the other is its variant, “The Red Man”. In “Chief of the Herok’a”, a great hunter lived with his wife and two small children. He told his wife to avoid his deer traps, but she ignored him, and whenever she went out, she was caught in one of the traps. No trap in which she was caught ever worked again. Finally, he had to shoot his own wife to save his family from starvation. He sent his two children to where his other sons lived, and on the way, the children saw the signs in the sky that their father had been overcome by their mother’s brothers. On the way, the little boy was kidnapped by a group of berdaches who had the power to change their size. He made good his escape and joined his sister and brothers. In time the little boy grew up and married a beautiful woman. His mother-in-law would send him on impossibly dangerous missions in order to kill him, but every time he emerged victorious. Among the spirits participating in the feasts that were held afterwards were Turtle and the Forked Man, who had two bodies joined at the waist. The young man allowed his sister to choose her husband from among the assembled spirits, and she picked the Forked Man. The old woman had a nightmare, and when she awoke, she said that the young man must play the game wegodiwa with them. He agreed. The young man with his spirit friends sat on the edge of a cliff while the old woman walked out into the thin air. She and her daughters gave a loud shout, and a gale force wind issued from above, yet the young man and the good spirits held fast. After four such attacks, the good spirits triumphed. The sons of the old woman were the ones who were making the wind. The young man, now in the form of Without Horns (Herok'aga), stood on the water and told his brothers to make the “herok'a breathings.” They uttered, ahahe, ahahe, and as they pulled their empty bow strings back and forth, their opponents fell over dead. The young man, Herok'aga, became chief over the village that was once ruled by the slain brothers. In time Herok'aga had a daughter, and when it was time for her to be married, he set up an ordeal designed to test the worth of her suitors. Finally, a Forked Man succeeded, and the couple set out for his home up above where he lived with his grandfather. One day as she was looking into the fire, she saw a head that was made red by the heat, yet it had tears rolling down its cheeks. The head explained that she was his granddaughter and that the old man there had beheaded him and placed him in the fire. She lifted the head out of the fire and put it in a white deerskin. When the Forked Man returned home, the head explained to him all that had happened. The husband demanded that his grandfather tell him where the headless body was, and they went out and found the body wandering around Red Hill. They brought it back and made a sweat bath in which the head was reattached to the body. Once he emerged whole again, he cursed the old man to become an owl. The grandfather whose head was reattached, is the chief of the herok'a. His son is the chief of the little children spirits who have the same power as the herok'a. From this story we learn that the elder man is chief of the herok’a, but his son, even though his name is Without Horns (Heroka’ga), is chief over the little children spirits. Both sets of spirits are able to kill with empty bows, just as though they themselves were the arrows. In “The Red Man”, the older man kills his wife because he has caught her making love with a bear. The man who killed him, rather than being turned into an owl, is killed by Trickster and Hare. With a stroke of his club, Hare shattered him into a thousand pieces of flint. The man known to us as “chief of the herok’a”, in this story is brought back to life and called “Red Man” (Wąkšucka), since his body is entirely red in color. Who is Red Man, chief of the herok’a? It would be left to speculation were it not for a story parallel to the Red Horn Cycle, where it is said of Red Horn, “'Without Horns' (herok’a) they call certain beings, he (Red Horn) was their chief; his sons were the chiefs of beings called 'childish people', they say.” Therefore, it is Red Horn who is Red Man, chief of the herok’a, and his sons are chiefs of the little children spirits. Both of these are tribes of lilliputian hunting spirits, whose spiritual essence is the arrow, and whose symbol is the bow. From another unpublished story, “The Baldheaded War Club”, we learn more about Red Horn and the herok’a. Trickster (Wakjąkaga) acquired an enormously powerful war club, and to fulfill his role as a savior of humanity, called together a war party to attack the evil spirits who had lorded it over humanity. The members of this select war party were Turtle, Wolf, Sleets as He Walks, Great Black Hawk, Red Horn, Otter, Loon, and the Twins (Flesh and Ghost). Under Trickster’s leadership, all kinds of foolish mistakes were made, so a different war leader stepped forward at the critical moment when they were being charged by the evil spirits. In this variant, Red Horn is first named “One Horn” (Hejąkiga), then “Without Horns” (Herok’aga), a name which elsewhere is given to his son. This is merely a reflection of the cross-generational identity of Red Horn and his sons. In one story the son of Red Horn is called by one of Red Horn’s old lovers by the name “Red Horn”; and in another story, the father of Red Horn is Wears Man-Faces on His Ears, another form of Red Horn himself. The he, "horn", in the names He-jąki-ga ("One Horn"), He-rok'a-ga ("Without Horns"), and He-šuc-ka ("Red Horn"), can be understood in these sagittary terms. In the myth known as "The Brown Squirrel", the hero of the story terrorizes a bad spirit by constantly pointing a red cedar horn at him. The horn is usually called "the red protruding horn" (he-pųjoge-šujera). However, once it is simply called he-pųjogera, "the protruding horn". At the very end of the myth the bad spirit is turned into a brown squirrel and told, "Humans you tried to abuse, so ever after will boys shoot you with protruding horns (he-pųjogera)." Therefore, arrows are horns, and paradigmatically, red horns. Consequently, the name Hešucka (“Red Horn”) not only refers to his red braid or “horn”, but to his mystical identity with the arrow. It is also the reason why the race over whom he is chief is called “without horns”, since they fire their bows without the need of an arrow. In a race, the Red Horn is triumphant over all the spirits, for he himself is the arrow he shoots to victory. Red Horn's sons The two wives of Red Horn were pregnant at the time of his death. Red Horn's first wife, the girl in the white beaverskin wrap, gave birth to a son who had the same red hair and human heads hanging from his ears as his father. Red Horn's second wife, the giantess, also gave birth to a red haired boy, but with living faces where his nipples should have been. The sons were spared by the giants and grew up to be very large. One day the eldest son went out to fast in order to get a blessing from the thunderbirds. He went to seek his visions at a place not far from a broad prairie where the giants had a village. He knew that the head of his father, whose hair had by now turned white, hung from a lodge pole there. When he called out to the spirits with a death song, the kind sung by prisoners about to be executed, the giants who heard it would immediately jump into the fire. When the old men of the village saw that so many of their people were jumping in the flames, they guessed at the cause, and ordered four warriors to guard the scalp pole. Two of the guards painted themselves red and the others painted themselves black. Red Horn's two sons decided then to retrieve the heads of their father and his friends. They use their powers to make special red and black arrows to kill the guards, then grabbed the heads and ran with them. As the boys ran they shot the giants with their arrows, each arrow killing many giants. When they ran out of arrows, they used their bows as clubs, almost wiping out the giants completely. A little girl with a boy that she packed on her back are spared so that the race of giants do not become extinct, but they are thrown to the other side of the sea so than will no longer be a threat. The two sons then burn the bodies of the giants and grind up their bones and spread the powder around their own village. The two sons take the head of Red Horn and ask their mothers to sleep with it, but each replies, "How can I sleep with that, it is only a skull?" The boys take all three heads and lay them in a bed in the middle of the lodge. The next day Red Horn, Turtle, and Storms as He Walks are all found alive and sleeping in the bed. Where the sons had scattered the powdered bones of the giants, all the people that the giants had killed were also found alive and sleeping. When Red Horn's wives saw this, they shouted, "Oh, our sons have brought our husbands back to life again!" The boys picked up their fathers and carried them around like children. In honor of this feat, Turtle and Storms as He Walks promise the boys special weapons. In another episode, the sons of Red Horn decide to go on the warpath. The older brother asks Storms as He Walks for the Thunderbird Warbundle. After some effort, it is produced, but the thunderbirds demand that it have a case. A friend of the sons of Red Horn offers his own body as its case. The boys take the Thunderbird Warbundle and with their followers go on a raid to the other side of the sky. Hall has shown that the mythic cycle of Red Horn and his sons has some interesting analogies with the Hero Twins mythic cycle of Mesoamerica. Big Boy "Big Boy", which was uncovered from the Great Mortuary of Craig Mound at Spiro, is a large effigy pipe weighing 11 lbs., 8 oz., probably made of bauxite. It is likely that it was originally a sculpture that was only later converted into a pipe bowl.61 This remarkable artifact was first illustrated in 1952. The figure is nude, with his hair arranged in an occipital bun and a long braid hanging over his left shoulder. His only body clothing is a cape draped over his back. The cape has a "spade" or feather design, leading most archaeologists to conclude that it was a feather cape, a mantle well known from many Native American cultures in historical times. However, it seems unlikely that it actually is a feather cape. The blanket ... is decorated with a "spade" design, which, considering the accuracy of detail and faithfulness of depiction in the rest of the pipe, is a detail that should be interpreted literally rather than figuratively. In this light, the "spade" design elements should be regarded as part of the blanket itself. It once bore a heavy coat of red ochre, some of which is still visible. He also wears a flat cap with a raised border around its top which has an "ogee" design in negative relief. Brown believes that this cap "appears to be a case for displaying a copper plate." The subject of the sculpture also wears a rich, triple-strand necklace of wampum beads. His most interesting feature, however, is a pair of prosopic ear ornaments, clearly of the Short-Nosed God type. Reilly, on the assumption that the SECC clay effigy pipes are of divine subjects, concludes, because of Big Boy's long red braid and prosopic earpieces, that he must represent "Morning Star" (by which he means Red Horn). James A. Brown leans strongly towards this view, but voices a note of caution: In a departure from the received opinion, Duncan and Diaz-Granados contend that the prosopic earpieces represent the Twins and were used by captives being adopted into the tribe. Consequently, they view Big Boy as a representation of such an adoptee, and not as Red Horn himself. Red Horn's children *Roland Barrymore *Leif Wakeford Category:Gods Category:Native gods Category:Male